Apart from the, you know, equities market, it’s been hard to find any real signs of inflation the past few years. Even this recent bout of data pointing to inflationisn’t decisive; it may all just be “noise,” as Janet Yellen argued last week. You’re going to hear an awful lot of arguments on both sides of this, because there’s going to be a lot of money plunked down on either side of this debate.

One vote for the “inflation’s back” camp is Societe Generale 's chief U.S. economist, Aneta Markowska, even though she acknowledges inflation in this most recent business cycle has been “somewhat of a puzzle.” Over the past few years, inflation has been down, then up, then down again. That last leg down ”caught most economists by surprise, because it occurred as excess slack in the economy was being eroded gradually.”

But recently, the deflation specter has vanished. That’s prompted Ms. Markowska to take a fresh look at pricing trends with a “bottoms-up” look at inflation. In a note to clients Monday, she broke down the overall inflation picture into its various components. One thing she found is that a significant chunk of the disinflationary trend had been tied to imports to the U.S., and specifically to China and its economy. With Chinese data, at least, pointing to a stabilizing economy, the disinflationary trend is dissipating. Other factors were slowing inflation in healthcare costs, and stable inflation figures in housing.

“Our bottom-up model projects a sharp rebound in core inflation starting in Q2 2014. By the end of the year, we expect core CPI to breach 2% and end at around 2.3% before eventually settling in the 2.5%-3% range. The core PCE deflator is expected to end the year at 1.5%, up from 1.1% in the first quarter, and will take longer to breach the critical 2% level. The slower PCE normalization is largely attributable to different components weights.”

That will put some pressure on the Fed’s current projections for inflation, she said, as its preferred measurement lags broader soundings. In the absence of a clear growth trend, like, say consistent 3% GDP growth, the inflation picture will become an even more critical factor. “If wage growth also begins to accelerate in line with our expectations, we believe that the combination will be enough to put some upward pressure on the FOMC’s rate forecasts,” she wrote.